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One aspect I love about my job as a college counselor is that while the information I share with students and parents through the college planning process can be similar, each student is different and I have to adjust what I share, at what time and how much information.  I met with one of my international students this past week.  Typically, international students are looking at applying to competitive admission colleges because it is honorable in their country to graduate from a college that has “name recognition” in their country.  There are about 30 colleges that make up this “list” of schools and they are all in the top of the US News and World Report rankings.  Believe me, I’ve had a couple international students e-mail me the list.  This particular international student, however, was not interested in the “name recognition” schools even though he has pretty strong grades and will have great scores.  I asked him why and he said, “I would rather be the head of the chicken instead of the tail of the phoenix”.  I have never heard this phrase before.  I did a little research and saw that in China, there is a well-known idiom that says, “I’d rather be a chicken’s head than the tail of a phoenix.”  The idiom expresses a commonly held notion: It’s better to be in a position of prominence, even if in a less glamorous sphere, than in a low position within a more prestigious context. In the West, a similar saying calls it being a “big fish in a small pond.” In daily life, this sort of thinking can take many forms. Many Chinese businessmen, for example, will leave their low positions in a major company in order to take a high position in a local unknown company.

I appreciated this student’s wisdom because what this idiom is saying is what I try and get students to understand regarding their decision as to which colleges to apply to and eventually attend.  This student was alluding to going to a big state University and finishing higher in his class rather than going to an Ivy league school and finishing in the bottom half of the class. Before those of you reading this post think I am saying that going to an Ivy league school or another highly competitive admission is not worth it, I want to make it clear that there are certainly a few advantages to going to these schools.  One is the networking opportunities because of wealthy and loyal alumni networks.  Another is opportunity to find a job (studies show these colleges are helpful in providing jobs in finance and consulting, when it comes to other majors there isn’t any evidence that competitive admissions colleges have a distinct advantage when it comes to finding a job).  Third is that because the overwhelming majority of these colleges are 100% meet need schools, they can be great buys for students who can get in and have significant need.

Nevertheless, there have been studies that show that students who finish at or near the top of their class at less competitive admission colleges are still accepted to competitive admission law, medical and graduate schools at a very high rate.  That is why it is important to understand that there are hundred’s of great colleges in the United States, not just 30-40.  The most important thing when researching colleges that you want to apply to is finding the best “fit” school.  One that you are going to thrive at academically, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.  If you have any questions about what factors are important to pay attention to please comment and I would be happy to provide more information.  You want to go to a college that you will earn merit-based scholarships and aid to go to so that when you are done with your bachelors degree, you are in great position financially to pursue a graduate degree and/or start a career.

When seniors apply to college they are encouraged to apply to a “balanced” list of colleges. Typically, this means applying to a few “reach” colleges (less than 30% admissions rate), “target” colleges (between a 30-60% admission rate) and “safety” or “likely” colleges (60% or higher admission rate). Colleges in each of these categories can vary depending on the student applying and how they have performed academically and/or test scores they have received.

The problem is that a lot of seniors begin the college application process having already determined in their mind what the “good”, “better” and “best” colleges are based on others opinions (friends and family), social media, rankings (read my view on college rankings here) and what they’ve read online. Many have spent little time researching other colleges that they maybe haven’t heard of but could be a great fit for what they are looking for. Why? Because if they haven’t heard about it…it can’t be a good school, right? The problem with this philosophy though is that they just eliminated 85% or more of the colleges in the United States.

What makes a school a “safety” school on your list of colleges that you are applying to? You have a greater than 60% change of being accepted. When you look at Temple University’s admissions profile in SCOIR, you see their acceptance rate is 71%. This lets you know that Temple could be a safety school for a majority of students. If you look at Temple’s Common Data Set here, in section C11, in order for Temple to be a “safety” school on your list, you want to be at a 3.25 (on a 4.0 scale) or higher because if you add up the percentages of students that were accepted and enrolled who had a GPA of 3.25 or higher, you will get 67.65%.

More than half of the colleges that were included in this study admitted two-thirds of their applicants!

THE MOST IMPORTANT COLLEGES THAT YOU APPLY TO WILL BE YOUR “SAFETY” SCHOOLS! Here are a number of reasons why and some resources to take advantage of in order to discover some great “safety” college options.

1. Depending on your major, “safety” colleges could have a better program than a “competitive admission” college.

If you believe in rankings, you should know that colleges get ranked according to specific criteria that has nothing to do with what majors are offered or how reputable that school may be for a certain major. Having met with college admissions counselors and visited colleges for over 20 years now, I know that there are colleges that have great education, journalism, engineering, computer science, nursing, political science and math programs (just to name a few) that aren’t in the top 100 colleges in the rankings, but their specific program would be ranked in the top 25 compared to some of the colleges at the top of the rankings. Who knew that Taylor University has an EXCELLENT journalism major, Purdue University is now of THE BEST engineering programs and Asbury University is one of the TOP broadcast journalism programs in the country. I could go on and on, however, you wouldn’t find out this information if you didn’t meet with college admissions reps that visit our school, attend college fairs or online events and ask questions or just put in an hour here and there and doing some research. It’s hard to go online and search for this information because the most competitive colleges will spend A LOT of money making sure their name pops up first in many of the ranking lists. Here’s a tip: When searching through rankings, write down the first 3 colleges you come across that you haven’t heard of as much and spend 25-30 minutes researching each of them. These could be great “safety” college options for you!

2. “Safety” colleges will pursue you!

This goes back to Jeff Selingo’s “Buyers and Sellers” list of colleges that is in each of your SCOIR Drives. The “seller” colleges are the more competitive admission colleges that don’t need to do much to get you to apply. They know that as long as they spend a lot of money staying on top of rankings and sending out bulk emails getting you to think you should apply, they have you and you are easily convinced to apply. The “buyer” colleges are the ones that need to intentionally recruit to get them to apply. They will visit high schools, send more personal information in the mail, pay for students to visit them in-person, and offer merit scholarship money. Take advantage of these opportunities to get to know if a certain college is a good for you! The “seller” colleges make up over 80% or more of colleges in the United States! Their admission rate is higher because only students apply to their school because they want to go there! They don’t get the 10,000-15,000 more applications each year because seniors just thought they’d “give it a shot” or “just tried” even though they know they aren’t getting in.

3. Being a “big fish in a small pond” is fun and provides different opportunities.

A blog post I wrote back in 2017 titled “Would you rather be the “head of a chicken rather than the tale of a Phoenix?”, explains everything you need to know about this point. I know there are opportunities to land great internships if you were attending a highly competitive admission college but I also know that a lot of times the big reason you end up getting hired because of the school listed on your resume.

4. Every college is going to provide you with the opportunities to succeed.

I have yet to visit a college that I thought, “they don’t seem to care about their students”. EVERY college I have visited, every college admissions counselor I have talked to and (almost) every alum I have chatted with, care for their school, love working there or enjoyed their experience there, and they are there to do whatever they can do give the students at their college the same experience. Sometimes I hear that students have more friendly and caring interactions at a “safety” school they are applying to compared do the more competitive admission college. At least in my experience, the tours at colleges who have over a 50% admission rate have been different than those with less than 30%. Why? Because the competitive admission colleges don’t need to spend intentional time with you. They just need your application to keep their admit rate low to stay on top of the rankings. They don’t even need to offer in-person tours anymore. They’ll just wait for you to ask questions, come to an online info session or come to their campus for a tour because they know you’ll do these things because you think you have to in order to “up your chances” for admission. The colleges with an over 50% admission rate? They’ll email you personally, send you intentional info and even some small swag in the mail to get you to visit their campus, offer to pay for some expenses to visit, have you meet with a professor when you are on campus and even give you a meal ticket.

5. Your “safety” colleges will award you the most merit scholarship money.

This is just a fact. The more competitive admission colleges don’t even have merit scholarship money because they promise to “meet full demonstrated need” (which they get to define by the way). Over 55% of students at the most competitive admission colleges PAY FULL PRICE! That’s over $80,000 a year! Because of what? The name of the school? The bragging rights with family and friends? Believe me, if you have significant financial need, can get accepted at a highly competitive admission college and will only pay significantly less than full price, by all means, go! However, for 96% of applicants to these colleges now, that’s not the case. Having financial need can hurt you at these colleges (read Jeff Selingo’s book titled “Who Gets In and Why”). Colleges with over a 50% admission rate will offer merit based scholarship money to applicants who have good grades and/or test scores. They have to in order to get the best students to come to their school. And these colleges may offer more if you ask the right way. Click here to read a great blog post about a senior’s decision to attend UPITT over Northwestern.

Below are a few resources for further reading on the importance of applying to “safety” colleges:

“Reach, Target and Safety Schools: Don’t Slip When Creating a Smart College List”

“Perception vs. Reality in College Admissions”

“Should You Pay More than $66,000 a Year for Northwestern University?”

Get to know more possible “safety” schools:

Stuart Nachbar has his own website titled “Educated Quest”. He has visited many colleges and writes school profiles based on these visits.

There is a show on Amazon Prime titled “The College Tour” and it has completed it’s 4th season. These are great 30 minute tours of many “safety” type colleges.